Metricom announced today that the Ricochet Wireless Network would be going dark on August 8th, as the company goes into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.

Offering ISDN speeds wirelessly over most of the Bay Area and 12 other markets, (we used to call them 'cities'), these people will now have to be satisfied with inferior CDPD coverage and providers.

I still have an old 28Kbps Ricochet transceiver, and I understand that they can work peer-to-peer. I wonder if there will ever be a good use for these things. The wireless network is going up for auction on August 16th, so there may yet be life for the hardware, but with what changes? I'm just glad that I finally realized that I'm more productive on the train without net access than with it. At least it was my choice before it was made for me.